Rumors about Nvidia making an x86 compatible processor have been swirling for at least a few years now but nothing substantial has been revealed thus far. Their is a new rumor that Nvidia may buy AMD, even though doing so might make AMD lose it’s x86 license. The reason AMD could lose their x86 license is that it may be part of a non-transferable cross licensing agreement with Intel. They’re saying that Nvidia would want to do this because Intel and AMD are planning CPUs with integrated video. Their is also a rumor that Intel has discrete video cards in the works to combat AMD’s purchase of ATI.

This rumor seems odd to me. It could make sense that Nvidia would want to make an x86 CPU, though it’s quite risky to develop one as all the other companies that have tried to compete with AMD and Intel in non-niche x86 markets have failed. Via has success with their x86 CPUs but for the most part they haven’t gone head to head with AMD and Intel, they’ve carved out a niche in the industrial and embedded markets where they have a larger install base than both AMD and Intel. Nvidia already has high end and solid video cards and chipsets and if they’re already developing an x86 processor then AMD has nothing but licenses that Nvidia would want. If AMD may lose those license if purchased, why would Nvidia want to pay a large amount of money for lots of overlapping technology from AMD and potential non existent licenses? Then their’s the inevitable anti-trust suits with the two large graphics card companies merging into one. Some previous rumors have stated that Nvidia may buy Via for their x86 license and this makes more sense to me. Via would probably be cheaper for Nvidia to buy and has already withstood being sued by Intel over x86 licensing. Via also has some technology that Nvidia currently doesn’t have such as AC’97 and HD Audio chips.

This entry was posted
on Friday, February 15th, 2008 at 2:19 am and is filed under Hardware, Motherboards, Processors, Video Cards.
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